Secluded with the Rogue

Chapter 3

Three

E lla arrived at Charles’s townhouse two hours later, hastily thanking his butler, Mr. Ramsey.

“Good afternoon, Ramsey. I’ve come to see my brother and Lord Kent.”

The butler nodded. “This way. His lordship mentioned you may come by,” Mr. Ramsey replied, and his eyes deepened with concern. “Your brother and Lord Kent are resting upstairs. Which do you prefer to see first?”

“My brother,” she added, and Ramsey showed her to an upstairs chamber. Graham was sleeping, but Ramsey assured her that the doctor had said he would be better in a few days.

“I must warn you, Miss Humphrey, Lord Kent is in a bad way, a very bad way indeed. Best to brace yourself.”

“Thank you.” She followed him to another bedroom. The room was dark, but a few lamps had been lit. Ella’s heart skipped a beat as she glimpsed a figure lying on the bed.

“Is there anything I can do for him?” she asked.

“Be with him,” Mr. Ramsey said. “Just let him feel your presence. The doctor told us that if he can survive the week, he’ll likely heal in time, but there’s a concern about bleeding on his brain.”

Ella slowly approached the bed. “And his other injuries?”

“His left leg was badly broken. The doctor said it will heal, but he’ll most likely have a limp. He suffered a few broken ribs as well.”

Ella covered her mouth with a trembling hand. It was all so much worse than she had feared.

“If you want, you could apply a cool cloth to his forehead. Perhaps get him to drink a bit of water. That might help.” The butler pointed to a pitcher of water and a glass as well as some fresh cloths.

“Thank you,” she murmured to Ramsey before she approached the bed.

A chair had been placed at Phillip’s bedside. Ella moved a little closer before she wet a clean cloth and placed it to his brow. His beautiful face had been transformed by black bruises and dried blood. She almost didn’t recognize him.

“Oh, Phillip,” she whispered. She was going to stay here as long as it took. She would not abandon him. She wasn’t a child of fifteen anymore. Their paths had rarely crossed in the last five years, but that made little difference to her now. She still felt wildly nervous around him and dizzy in a way she’d never felt around any other man. Yet to see this tall, powerful, elegant, and sensual man brought so low, so wounded, it tore at her heart.

“Phillip, you must stay strong, do you hear me? You must survive.” She washed away some dried blood from his lips. As she inspected the rest of his body, she discovered his knuckles were bloody and raw. She set the cloth aside and rang for a maid to bring her some salve. Once she had it, she dabbed her fingertips into the pot and carefully worked it into the cuts and broken skin of his knuckles, then his split lip and the cuts upon his brow.

Sometime later, she was exhausted and laid her head down to rest, only to jerk awake when he made a sound. It was somewhere between a groan and a mutter.

“Phillip?” She was careful to touch his arm where she knew it was not bruised.

He made the same sound again, like a moan deep at the back of his throat.

“How about a bit of water?” She filled the glass and held it to his lips. He managed a few tiny sips before he turned his head away, just a fraction. Ella’s eyes blurred with tears, but she felt hopeful too.

“I’m here. I won’t leave you.” She brushed his dark hair back from his brow. “You’re safe now. Dream and rest.”

T he voice of an angel drifted through the pain.

“ Dream and rest .”

It made him feel safe enough to let himself go deeper into the realm of dreams, because he knew he would dream of her…

T wo years ago

Phillip lounged against a pillar at the back of the assembly room in London, watching a crowd of debutantes being presented to the king. The elaborate affair happened only once a year, and all the eligible young ladies who’d come out for the year were presented to him, wearing their best white gowns.

“Lord, this nonsense drives a man to drink,” Graham muttered next to him.

Phillip laughed at the expression on his friend’s face. Graham mimed hanging himself with his neckcloth, and Phillip snorted. Two plump matrons with gigantic ostrich feathers in their turbans turned to scowl at them both.

“Hush!” one woman hissed, the jowls at her throat shaking with fury.

Phillip smacked Graham in the chest to silence him, otherwise Graham would have choked on his laughter. Phillip had always had a healthy respect for ladies in society, especially those with daughters of marriageable age. If a man was not cautious around them, they would find a way to ensnare him in a compromising position with their daughter. Society dictated a gentleman was to pursue a lady, yet everyone also knew that many rich, titled men like himself tended not to give chase, which made quite a few matchmaking mamas desperate.

Graham had little to fear from such women. As the younger brother to the Earl of Lonsdale, he did not attract much focus, which suited Graham just fine. He preferred to chase lusty young widows and had turned that into an art form. But Phillip was not so inclined. He had not found a woman yet to attract his attention.

No, that wasn’t entirely true. There had been one woman, one he’d kept a safe distance from for three years.

“Ah, there she is. Little bit’s all grown up.” Graham sighed and nodded at the young lady currently curtsying to the king. Phillip’s heart stopped.

Ella wore a cream-colored gown embroidered with pale gold thread in the shape of flying swallows. The lamplight gleamed favorably on the crown of her gold hair, and the loose locks had been pulled back into a Grecian style. Gold satin ribbons were threaded through her hair as a sort of headband. Jewels glinted off the ribbon, calling more attention to her hair and face.

Her features were delicate, her mouth full and her eyes almost slumberous, as though she had lived all of her life in the midst of a wonderful dream. Her chin was a little square, but the strength it gave her features did not detract from her femininity. Her porcelain skin was slightly rosy along her cheekbones as she blushed when the king nodded in approval. A few loose tendrils bounced down against her cheeks as she bent her head before straightening and standing aside for the next young woman to be presented.

“Ella,” Graham called out to his sister, jolting Phillip back to self-awareness as well as earning fresh scowls from the two women in front of them.

“Sorry, quite sorry,” Graham replied smoothly, trying to unruffle their feathers. Then Graham waved at his sister, who joined them. Her face was still flushed with excitement, and Phillip bit the inside of his cheek to keep his body from responding to her. He couldn’t afford to do or say anything foolish with most of the ton watching them. Yet he couldn’t resist wondering if that was how she would look in bed beneath him after he’d given her the most exquisite pleasure.

“You did well, Ella. Mama is beaming with pride.” Graham kissed her forehead. Ella’s gaze darted to Phillip. Her sweet, searching, yet bold gaze made his blood hum with forbidden desire.

“Yes, you did very well,” Phillip found himself adding.

He had done his best to stay away from her after that night in the billiard room three years ago. But in that time, she had grown from a very young lady of fifteen to a grown woman of eighteen. Her curvy figure was both regal and elegant, and there was even a delicate nature about her—not one of the body, but of the spirit.

No…that wasn’t quite right. He had trouble trying to put into words what it was that called upon every protective instinct within him.

Her blue-gray eyes were locked on his, their slightly tilted shape making her appear a little more exotic and the hopeful twinkle in them a tad impish. That was it. She made him think of a fae princess, delicate in appearance, but surprisingly strong. Yet at the same time, one word of disapproval or disappointment from someone she trusted would crush her. A delicate heart, but only toward those she loved. To all others, she was a bastion of inner strength.

The music changed in the room as the presentation ended.

“Now for the dances,” Graham said, and he gave Phillip an appraising look. “Take my place and dance with Ella for me? Lord Garnsey’s widow has just arrived.” Graham grinned in greeting at a buxom brunette in a deep-red dress who had just walked into the assembly room.

Before either Ella or Phillip could stop him, Graham had slipped away through the crush of people, leaving Phillip alone with the woman he desperately wanted to bed and also needed to avoid.

“You don’t have to dance with me, Lord Kent. I would not hold you to that. I will find the other ladies without partners.” She turned to join a group of young women who had all gathered forlornly at the far wall. The thought of Ella joining them, her disappointment mingling with theirs, made him act. He reached out and caught her wrist.

“Wait, I will claim your first dance. Allow the men here a chance to see what they are missing.” Her slender wrist was warm in his hand, and his pulse beat faster as he led her out onto the center of the floor.

Three couples joined him and Ella to form a rectangle for a quadrille. As they began, Phillip let go of his reservations and gave in to his delight in dancing with her. Graham and Charles always said she was fragile, like a flower that had bloomed too early and one good frost could destroy her delicate bloom, but Phillip saw none of that. He saw only a woman with the light of joy in her eyes. She laughed as they spun and moved apart and back together, and soon the other couples were smiling too. Her genuine joy of the moment was infectious.

When the dance ended, his heart sank and he led her back to the side of the ballroom where her mother and eldest brother, Charles, stood.

“Lonsdale,” he said to Charles. Despite Graham and Charles’s distance between each other, Phillip had maintained a steady friendship with Charles over the years.

“Kent, well done. Ella seemed to enjoy that.” Charles offered his younger sister a benevolent smile.

Ella slowly pulled her arm free of Phillip’s and lowered her head to hide a fresh blush.

“Where the devil is Graham?” Charles asked Ella. “Wasn’t he supposed to dance with you?”

Phillip replied for her. “He needed to catch a bit of air, I believe.” The little white lie kept Ella from appearing abandoned by her own brother in favor of a busty widow.

“Ah.” Charles frowned slightly, perhaps seeing through the deception, and then smiled at Ella. “My turn, little bit.” He offered her his arm and escorted her back onto the dance floor. Phillip remained next to the dowager countess.

“Thank you for sparing Ella being left out of her first dance. I will have a word with Graham when he resurfaces.”

“My pleasure. Ella is a lovely young woman,” he replied, his gaze still on her as she danced with Charles.

Violet watched her daughter with pride. “She is, isn’t she? She was so sick as a young child, the way children are when born too early, but she turned out quite well.”

Phillip couldn’t help but agree. Ella Humphrey was an exquisite woman, the kind who would age with timeless beauty, much like her mother. But looks weren’t the only thing that mattered, at least not to Phillip. His parents had been a love match, and he had been raised in a home that showed what love could be like. And Phillip would only love a woman who was more beautiful on the inside than the outside. His father used to say that a woman’s heart and mind would be his truest and dearest companions when the years turned him old and gray. Beauty of the body faded, but not beauty of the heart or mind.

Ella spun around the dance floor, her bell-like laughter stirring something deep inside him, an old ache for things he had buried since his parents had died. It almost hurt to watch her natural joy.

“Please excuse me, my lady.” He bowed to Violet and left the room. He stepped into the moonlit gardens at the back of the assembly rooms. It was September, and the leaves had turned to red and gold. The light bite of the winter chill hung upon the air, promising an early frost. He enjoyed the fall, the way he could smell the coming of winter and feel strangely alive.

Fall brought out a melancholy feeling in him with each day that passed. Bittersweet thoughts of summers gone before seemed to deepen his understanding of the world and his fellow man.

He moved off the marble steps and went deeper into the gardens, only to stumble as someone bumped into him from behind. He turned, catching the person as they fell into his chest.

“Oh, excuse me!” A sweet, almost husky voice tightened his body with hunger as he recognized the voice.

“Ella?” He spoke her given name, then nearly bit his tongue before he corrected himself. “Lady Ella?”

“Phillip?” Ella gasped and corrected herself as well. “I mean, Lord Kent.”

“No, please, call me Phillip.” He made sure she was steady before he released her.

“Well, if that is what you wish, then you must call me Ella.” She smiled up at him, and her eyes reflected the nearly full moon far above them. She trembled a little. The expanse of her ivory skin exposed along her neck and shoulders no doubt let her become more chilled than him.

“Are you cold, Ella?” He couldn’t resist speaking her name. He liked the way it rolled sweetly off his tongue.

“A little. I was dreadfully warm inside, and yet I take one step out here and I’m suddenly cold. How silly.”

He grinned down at her, even knowing he was playing with fire by standing this close. “Not silly at all.” He removed his coat and swung it around her shoulders, pulling it closed in front of her like a cloak. She was dwarfed by it and looked so small and delicate. Seeing her in his clothes appealed to some primal need inside him. He nearly laughed at the thought that a civilized gentleman of the modern age would feel like one of his ancient ancestors by showing he could care for his woman. He was distracted by the way the moonlight seemed to illuminate her dark-gold lashes as she gazed up at him.

Lord, she is beautiful.

“Thank you, Phillip.” She snuggled more deeply into his coat. “Did I disturb you just now? If so, I’m terribly sorry.”

“No, not at all. I like to take a bit of air myself.”

She nodded and then looked away shyly. “Thank you for dancing with me. I truly didn’t wish to join the other wallflowers, not at my first ball.”

“Nor should you have. It was shameful for Graham to leave you like that, but I confess it was my delight to benefit from his absence.” He wanted to court her, wanted to be the man to lay claim to her heart, but he’d already suffered such great pain, such loss. He wasn’t sure he could go through it again. It was better not to love, even as irresistible as she was.

Ella was looking at him again, and her blue-gray eyes seemed to strip him bare, rocking him clear down to his very bones.

“You were kind to me all those years ago,” she said suddenly. “I didn’t understand then why you were, but I do now.”

Those penetrating eyes held him prisoner. He couldn’t look away.

He was confused. “Kind?”

“In the billiard room. I was young, too young to understand that what I asked of you was dangerous. I was a foolish girl.” Now she looked away, breaking eye contact, and suddenly he could breathe again.

“Oh” was all he found the strength to say.

“I wanted to thank you, that is all. I don’t wish for any more awkwardness between us.” She laughed, the sound sweet and almost teasingly impish. “I’m sure I could find another man to kiss me now that I’m grown.” She tilted her face up at the moon, so calm and self-assured.

Phillip was awestruck. In many ways she hadn’t changed, not in the ways that mattered. The girl who’d helped him forget his sorrows that night three years ago, however briefly, was still there, but that only made her more tempting. She was indeed grown. A woman’s mind, a woman’s heart, and now she was out in society, seeking kisses from men who might not have the self-control he had had three years ago.

“Ella, surely you know that most men are dangerous. You cannot go about asking for kisses. You could be compromised and find yourself married to some fool who won’t…” He swallowed the rest of his words, too afraid to let her hear what was in his mind.

“Who won’t what?”

He raised a hand to her head, curling his fingers around the neck that he could spend hours exploring with his lips. Her slender hands twisted in her skirts, yet she held still except to lift her head up, angling her lips closer to his.

“What?” she repeated, but he had already forgotten whatever he’d been about to say as he fixated on those lips. They reminded him of fresh rose blooms, and he imagined they would taste as soft and sweet as they looked.

“A man who won’t appreciate you for the gift you are,” he said, his body dangerously close to taking control.

Her dark-gold brows arched mischievously. “Then I must find a man who is not dangerous, I suppose. Would you…kiss me? Now that I am grown?”

Not dangerous…hardly . Phillip felt like he was back in the billiard room, trying to remember that he was a good man, not some bloody rakehell who would take advantage of a sweet young woman. But damned if Ella didn’t seem to find every chink in his armor and crawl underneath. He struggled to remember that he was a gentleman as he was swept away by the magnetic compulsion of Ella’s moonlit eyes.

“If I kiss you, then you must let no other man do this unless you intend to marry him. Others would seek to take advantage of you.”

“You will be my tutor, then?” Images flashed through his mind of her in his bed, exhausted and happy after hours of lovemaking.

“Just this once,” he breathed, every muscle in him straining against his fraying control.

“One kiss? But I couldn’t possibly learn enough from just one,” she teased, her voice gentle as a caress.

“You’d be surprised, darling.” He couldn’t resist smiling at her.

He took her hand and led her deeper into the gardens. They found a marble bench a few turns in, and after making sure they were alone, he pulled her down to the bench beside him. He had but one brief second to think clearly, to change his mind, but then she placed one hand over his thigh and he was lost.

“A kiss sometimes begins soft,” he murmured as he leaned down and cupped her face in his hands. She closed her eyes as he brushed his lips back and forth over hers. They were even softer than he had imagined.

“Can it be hard?” she asked against his mouth.

“Yes, my darling, it can, but that comes later. Part your lips—let me explore you.”

She opened her lips, and he playfully licked at her with his tongue before he slid it inside to touch hers. She jolted against him, and he bound an arm around her waist, holding her close.

“This is how the French kiss,” he said. “Slow. Intimate.” She gave a shivery sigh as her tongue sought entrance to his mouth this time. Lord, he could become drunk on Ella and her kisses. Simply having her in his arms was making his senses spin.

“I like it,” she whispered back. He smiled and bit her bottom lip, drawing it deeper into his mouth before he let go and released it. He slid his hands down her back to caress her bottom and couldn’t resist squeezing it. She whimpered and leaned into him even more. This time when he kissed her, he kissed hard, devouring her with his mouth, relishing her little gasps of shock and delight as he conquered her with kisses.

He moved fast, lifting her up so she sat across his lap. It gave him better access to her legs and her dainty ankles. He slid one hand up her skirts, drawing his fingertips along her calf over her white stockings. Her breath hitched, and she curled her arms around his neck.

“I feel so strange,” she said.

“You do? Where, my love?” he asked, trying not to smile as he realized she was becoming aroused, possibly for the first time.

“My lower belly…” She sounded surprised.

“That’s desire, darling.” He continued to stroke her calf, noting with pride the little tremors that came from her as she started to shift restlessly on his lap.

“You feel that way too?” She caressed the back of his neck, lightly running her nails through his hair at the base of his skull. She was a pure delight.

“I do, especially when you do that.” He shuddered as she continued that delicious friction through his hair, and a bolt of fiery need shot straight through him.

“What is—?” She rolled her hips on top of his lap, clearly feeling him harden beneath her.

“Sorry, my darling. I cannot seem to control my reactions to you.”

“Oh. This is normal?” She seemed puzzled by what she’d felt.

“It is.”

She lowered her head, slowly kissing him again, and her wanton sighs and feverous kisses helped convince him that perhaps he had died and was now in heaven.

Voices in the garden drew close, too close. It was like a splash of cold water on his head, jerking him back to reality.

“I think it’s time we stopped. You must return to the ball before someone misses you.” He gave her surprised lips one last lingering kiss before he set her off his lap. She straightened her skirts, and they both walked back to the entrance to the assembly rooms.

“Go on,” he urged when she tried to take him back in with her.

“You’re not coming?” she asked.

“No, darling. I must be going home. Congratulations on your come-out.” He cupped her cheek once more and brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips.

Then he stepped back and walked away. Leaving her behind created an ache in his chest, but he had done the right thing. If he had stayed, Ella would have been truly compromised. Graham and Charles would have demanded he marry her. Marriage in and of itself was not the problem, but losing Graham’s trust and possibly his friendship was not something he could survive. Nor could he trust his heart to another soul again only to have it shattered forever if he dared to love Ella and then lost her.